Duckoon - Creative Goods

The developers of the Patch XR VR game needed the first beta testers, people who love synthizers and are not afraid of the virtual world. Of course, there was no doubt here that this could be fun. Kibla lent us Oculus VR headset and I sank into the VR world. Working hours spent in the virtual world, a whole week, a already begins to shatter a healthy perception of reality. In addition to the “real” life and the night of dreams, when sometimes the scenario is even more amazing, but we usually do not care – now you have a new additional world, an extra one.

In Patch XR, the way to move is that you just squeeze the controller and move the whole world towards you or transon, and in real life you can move physically and that takes time.

... Another (virtual) world you can escape into — besides the real and the one we dream of at night — the more of these worlds, the less important they have. It would seem that everything becomes untrue.

Although you know that you are in another world, the mind immediately gladly accepts combining components and getting acquainted with the system conceived by the developers of the game. You have objects that trigger the sample, you have omnidirectional speakers whose volume changes depending on your position, buttons, controls, logical elements for connecting, routing and modifiyng signals, filters, modulators, everything good that comes with any normal sound synthesizer and more.

Since it has always been interesting for me to think about the music system and how the different scales and their modes get along with each other, it seemed to me a good idea to start the scale pitches randomly, but to limit everything with a few rhythmic forms (but of course, I also allowed the rhythm a particular piece of freedom with mathematical randomness).

The result, of course, is not a soothing symphony, because I did not have enough time to implement all the beautiful mathematical symmetry and tricks used by Beethoven. A week is a bit to short for such adventures. In general, I also think that it is better not to understand when it comes to music or art in general – when art is “done”- the mind must be sidelined to give space for the heart.

This video was presented at a Nordic Game Conference as part of a Patch XR demo. It was a really fun week, but I was also glad to get my headset back and go back to living only in two worlds, instead of three.

Duckoon id dedicates to Mica Vodopivec and Baco Perović, our duck family, that unfortunately ended up as a meal for the beasts from the nearby forest. We thank the shy duckies that had shown us good times by the pond. May you be happy.